Subby used "revenue" as most do. Revenue means no expenses, and expenses are massive. Usually you can take 95% of revenue away for expenses for a company of this size in this industry.

Net income, often called profit, makes this payment about 1 quarter worth.

Before you poo-poo that, consider that this is only ONE payment BP is making. Cost of cleanup, other lawsuits and such add another $30 billion to this number.

This means BP has paid two years worth of profits due to this disaster, not 16 days worth of profits. If you think any company just says "oh well, no big deal, lets keep going" after losing two years worth of profits, you are obviously not investor material.

I make no defense of BP, but the subby is obviously downplaying the impact of the disaster to BP for, likely, some political reason. I'm an investor and the numbers are the truth - this disaster hurt BP badly.

FTFA: Profits were $5.5B in Q3, or about $60M/day. This fine is $4.5B, so about 75 days of profit.And this is not the end of the lawsuits over this incident, and company has booked provisions of $38.1B, or about 635 days of profit, or about 1.75 years.So think on a personal level, if you had a fine that was 2 years of your salary.

I'm not defending the company, but no need to exaggerate like the fine is less than a tip on one of their boozy business lunches.

Remember: Kill a dozen workers due to lax safety standards, cover it up, massively pollute the environment and have the federal and state governments incur massive cleanup costs? Why, those people are Republican heroes!